I was cruising along the Ventura Freeway the other day when a red Cadillac blew past me like I was standing still. I had to look quick, but I saw that old bumper sticker sayin’: get in, sit down, shut up, and hold on. Well, it was like an inspiration going ninety-five miles an hour and the first thing that came to mind was “Hot Rod Lincoln.” Not the original twelve-cylinder song but the one’s that got eight, and uses ‘em all. It’s got overdrive too, just won’t stall. By now you can probably guess where we’re going with today’s batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl. If not, here’s a hint: It’s got dyna-flow and power glide. It’s bored and stroked and it satisfies. That’s right, it’s all about fast cars, faster women, and going to jail if you’re not careful. In fact, you better “Slow down.” You’re moving way too fast. Next thing you know, there’s a red light in the rear view and you’re locked up in county where prisoner forty-eight says to number 1-0-3, you’re the cutest jailbird I ever did see. And who needs that?
Elvis Costello revs things up in the middle with the second shortest track from My Aim is True and then we’ve got Jake and Elwood rockin’ the cell block. Meanwhile, standing on the side of the road, wearing a pair of alligator shoes, that’s Rory Gallagher and his date’s whose got on her cat clothes, just waiting for Little Feat to pick ‘em up and get rolling on down Highway 95 with the cruise control in overdrive. This set is so tight it’s guaranteed to get your motor running right. In fact, we just might lose control tonight here in the Way Back Studios. But before we do, we’ll hear from Willie Nile, talking about this girl in his neighborhood. You know the type I’m talkin’ about. And then, the Glimmer Twins, gonna raise some hell down at the union hall, drive us all right over the wall. So dig these sounds on the radio. Flip, flop, fit to drop. Come on now, we’re gonna let it rock.
Willie Nile
She's So Cold
Beatles
Slow Down
Commander Cody
Hot Rod Lincoln
Blues Brothers
Jailhouse Rock
Elvis Costello
Mystery Dance
Little Feat
Let It Roll
Rory Gallagher
Cruise On Out
Rolling Stones
Rip This Joint
Dig that sound on the satellite radio. A set full of four barrel carburetors, duel exhausts, good brakes, and fair tires. Going so fast at the end, the telephone poles started looking like fence posts. That’s Bobby Keys wailing on the saxophone with the Stones doing “Rip This Joint.” Now, here’s an interesting bit of trivia. Something I didn’t plan at all. There’s a line in that song that goes, “Short Fat Fanny is on the loose.” Now it turns out “Short Fat Fanny” was the title of a top ten hit in the late 1950’s for New Orleans singer-songwriter, Larry Williams. The very same Larry Williams who wrote “Dizzy Miss Lizzy” and “Slow Down” which we heard earlier in the set covered by the Beatles. That was followed by another track originating in the fifties, “Hot Rod Lincoln,” redone in the seventies by Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen. And in keeping with the times, a third song from that decade, featuring Spider Murphy on the tenor saxophone and Little Joe blowing on the slide trombone or words to that effect. John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd covering Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller’s “Jailhouse Rock” – a #1 hit for Elvis in the fall of 1957.
The other Elvis, Costello, dropped by in the middle of all that to show us the “Mystery Dance.” The rest of the set was full scale commotion and a pace that wouldn’t stop. As Rory Gallagher said, “You better leave town gracefully if you’re too pooped to pop.” Little Feat was in there too like a smooth stretch of highway and a cool summer breeze. And we started with Willie Nile. A song called “She’s So Cold.” Here’s another coincidence: the Stones recorded a different song with that same title in which Mick says, “I tried rewiring her and I tried refiring her. I think her engine is permanently stalled in the Way Back Studios. I’m Bill Fitzhugh, thanks for tuning in. And for those seeking a little something extra, extra read all about it, you can do just that at billfitzhugh.com. I’ll be back next time with a fresh batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl, right here in the Deep Tracks.
Segment 102
Just for the sake of argument, let’s say you find eight songs that have been broken into twelve parts. The parts are scattered all over the place and your job is to put them back together again, like a vinyl Humpty Dumpty. The question is, how would you do it? Who would you call? All the king’s horses and all the king’s men? What would you use? Elmer’s glue? No. All you need is love, a caulking gun, and a large tube of Fitzhugh’s All Hand Mixed Vinyl. The application’s easy and the clean up’s a snap. That’s right, it’s the same product Walter Becker and Donald Fagan use to put the shine in their Japan and the sparkle in their China. It’s the perfect solution for all your household problems. Fixing a whole in the ocean? Trying to make a dove tail joint? Well, looking through the bent back tulips to see how the other half lives, we find Lennon and McCartney using All Hand Mixed Vinyl for fixing a hole where the rain gets in, as well as for putting their glass onion back together again. All of which goes to show that Fitzhugh’s All Hand Mixed Vinyl is waterproof and capable of withstanding extreme temperatures. Whether it’s Rod Stewart’s fast back, mid-engine Porche, Bob Seger’s diamond ring, or his Cadillac car well, I could go on like that all day but I think I’ve made my point.
Today’s batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl is proof positive that here in the Way Back Studios, when we find a song that has a hole, we stick something in it. And we’ve got plenty to choose from this time out, each of which will be explained as amply as a fat bottomed girl at the other end of the show. And when you’ve got all those holes, what better to stick in them than a strap-on Steely Dan, the heroic minded ones for your enlightenment and entertainment pleasure. Here’s five, four, three, two, one song from Countdown to Ecstacy.
Steely Dan
Bodhisattva (part 1)
Beatles
Glass Onion (part 1)
Rod Stewart
True Blue
Beatles
Glass Onion (part 2)
Steely Dan
Bodhisattva (part 2)
Bob Seger
Mary Lou (part 1)
Beatles
Rain (part 1)
Bob Seger
Mary Lou (part 2)
Beatles
Glass Onion (part 3)
E.L.O.
El Dorado Overture
E.L.O.
I Can't Get It Out of My Head
Queen
Fat Bottomed Girls
Wrapping up with those fat bottomed girls we love so much, we just took eight songs, broke ‘em into twelve parts, and rearranged ‘em for maximum amusement. Here’s what happened. I was listening to Classic Vinyl one afternoon when they played “Glass Onion,” John Lennon’s tongue-in-cheek response to the whole ‘Paul is dead’ thing, a song I’ve heard a thousand times before. But this time I noticed the two false endings and those slowly fading strings at the end, all the ingredients we need for what we do here. After the false endings in “Glass Onion,” the song always returns with Ringo’s big drum lick, so all I needed was two songs starting with a drum lick and one with some strings at the top. In the first break, we turned to Rod Stewart’s “True Blue.” Then it was back to “Glass Onion.” In the next break we went with Bob Seger’s “Mary Lou” which, as fate would have it, also has a false ending. In Seger’s break, we stuck the first part of the Beatles, “Rain,” which also has a false ending. At this point, the set starts to get like something out of Alice in Wonderland. When we got to the break in “Rain” we returned to the second half of the Bob Seger followed by the third part of “Glass Onion,” ending with those strings.
So, naturally, we turned to the Electric Light Orchestra, slipping into the “El Dorado Overture” which segues on its own into “I Can’t Get It Out of My Head” which ends with those soaring voices that matched those at the top of Queen’s “Fat Bottomed Girls.” But even with all that, the set came up short. Well, one thing led to another and then to Steely Dan’s “Bodhisattva” which, as it turns out, also has a false ending. So I had to reconfigure the whole thing, sticking the second part of “Bodhisattva” somewhere in the middle. What a tangled web we weave here in the Way Back Studios. You can read all about that at billfitzhugh.com. I’m Bill Fitzhugh. Thanks for tuning in. I’ll be back next time with a fresh batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl and I hope you’ll join us, right here in the Deep Tracks.
Segment 103
It’s time to sharpen your number two pencils for another Way Back Studios pop quiz. Ready? Here we go. Name the song that contains the following lyrics: “Remember me to the one who lives there. She once was a true love of mine.” Okay, time’s up. If you said Bob Dylan’s “Girl From the North Country,” you’re right. So if you said, Simon and Garfunkle’s “Scarborough Fair,” you’re also right. And if you said, but those are completely different songs, you’re also right. And that raises the question: How’d that happen? The answer to that is found in the year 1670 where we find a Scottish ballad titled “The Elfin Knight.” Now, according to the people who keep track of these things, “The Elfin Knight” was the source for an English folk ballad called “Scarborough Fair.” Scarborough being a town on the North Sea coast where, during the late Middle Ages, they held an annual trading event known as Scarborough Fair. A few hundred years later the English folk singer, and occasional member of Steeleye Span, Martin Carthy taught this traditional ballad to Bob Dylan and later to Paul Simon. Bob took the two lines from the original ballad and incorporated them into his “Girl From the North Country.”
Three years later, Simon and Garfunkle took a different approach. They used one of the many versions of the ballad and sort of hand-mixed it with a Paul Simon song called “The Side of the Hill,” singing the two songs simultaneously as melody and counter melody. For reasons unexplained they titled the resulting track “Scarborough Fair” slash “Canticle.” I say unexplained because a canticle is typically a hymn with lyrics taken directly from the Bible as opposed to Paul Simon. Also unexplained is why today’s batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl features a Dylan song from Blood on the Tracks instead of “Girl From the North Country.” We’ve also got a nice segue suggested by our pal Kimberly featuring Fleetwood Mac and the Doobie Brothers. But first we’ve got a sweet little mix involvingb John Lennon and the one-time guitarist for Glass Harp, Mr. Phil Keaggy.
Phil Keaggy
Evensong
John Lennon
Oh My Love
Simon & Garfunkle
Scarborough Fair / Canticle
Bob Dylan
If You See Her Say Hello
Cat Stevens
The Wind
Allman Brothers
Melissa
Rolling Stones
No Expectations
Doobie Brothers
White Sun
Fleetwood Mac
Jewel Eyed Judy
That’s what Fleetwood Mac sounded like in 1970 after Peter Green hit the road. Before that, the Doobies from 1972. Those last two tracks were suggested by our pal and favorite national wildlife refuge system employee, Kimberly. She sent me an email to say she was listening to Toulouse Street one night and couldn’t help but notice that the Doobie Brothers’ “White Sun” sounded a lot like Fleetwood Mac’s “Jewel Eyed Judy” so we gave it a try and sure enough, it’s a nice little mix. Thanks Kimberly. By the way, if you’ve got any segue suggestions, I’m all ears. You can find an email link at billfitzhugh.com. Before the Doobie Brothers, we had “No Expectations.” The Stones from Beggar’s Banquet which segued nicely out of The Allman Brother’s “Melissa.” And leading into that was another acoustic beauty from the Cat Stevens album Teaser and the Fire Cat. A song called “The Wind” which I think is the third shortest song he ever recorded.
At the top, a brief instrumental called “Evensong” by Phil Keaggy that segued nicely into John Lennon’s “Oh My Love.” After that, Simon and Garfunkle did a mix of their own. They took the traditional English folk ballad, “Scarborough Fair” and sang it simultaneously with an early Paul Simon song called “The Side of the Hill.” Two songs for the price of one. Earlier we talked about how “Scarborough Fair” and Bob Dylan’s “Girl From The North Country” shared that lyric about remembering me to the one who lives there. Well I tried “Girl From the North Country” in the set but it didn’t quite work. So we went with a different Dylan track that had similar sentiment. “If You See Her, Say Hello.” Well, that’s all the Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme we have this week. Thanks for listening. I’m Bill Fitzhugh and I’ll be back next time with a fresh batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl and I hope you’ll join us, right here in the Deep Tracks.
Segment 104
I think it was Joe Walsh who said, ‘I was born in the city, my back against the wall. Nothin’ grows and life ain’t pretty. No one’s there to catch you when you fall.’ Yeah, well, they say there are eight million stories in the naked city, Joe, and today’s batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl is just one of them. It’s an unsentimental soundtrack about crime, violence, and the urban nightmare. A hardboiled set of circumstances dropped onto the turntable and played out smack in the middle of the concrete jungle. That’s right, it’s hot time, summer in the city, when the back of your neck gets dirt and gritty. Like it says in the Bible: Woe to the bloody city! It’s all full of lies and robbery. The prey departeth not. Or as Stevie Wonder said, it’s a place that’s cruel and couldn’t be much colder. This one got started when I realized I had three songs that used urban sound effects, like sirens, car horns, and jack hammers. An unlikely trio: Stevie Wonder, The Lovin’ Spoonful, and America. But I figured out how to dice and splice ‘em into a tasty urban mix. So be sure to keep your ears open for all those honking horns as mix between the three.
Before we get there, we’ll hear “City, Country, City” and the definitive urban theme song, “Shaft.” So yeah, this one’s all about the big, bloody city, teeming with rootless and uprooted people, low lifes and bad attitudes. A place where danger lurks around every corner. Hey, it’s a jungle out there. Nothing but con men and thieves, pimps and hustlers. Greedy landlords, corrupt cops, and political fixers. A place where everything’s for sale and anybody can be bought. Carol Leifer had a great line about the ultimate city, New York. She said, “It’s the only city where people make radio requests like, ‘This is for Tina. I’m sorry I stabbed you.’” From the Way Back Studios, here’s our ode to life in the big city.
War
City, Country, City (part 1)
Isaac Hayes
Shaft
War
City, Country, City (part 2)
Stevie Wonder
Living For The City (part 1)
Lovin' Spoonful
Summer in the City (part 1)
Stevie Wonder
Living For The City (part 2)
Lovin' Spoonful
Summer in the City (part 2)
Stevie Wonder
Living For The City (part 3)
Lovin' Spoonful
Summer in the City (part 3)
America
Hollywood
Bob Seger System
Dr. Fine
From the East Coast to the West, life in the big city has inspired a lot of artists to write songs about urban existence and we just heard a few good examples. That was America singing about “Hollywood.” Before that, we spent ten minutes mixing back and forth between the social commentary of Stevie Wonder’s “Living for the City” and The Lovin’ Spoonful’s “Summer in the City.” We broke the two songs into six parts and had our way with them, proving once again that it’s not just what we play, it’s how we play it. “Summer in the City” started out as a poem written by John Sebastian’s brother, Mark, while in high school. When they turned it into a song, John added some darker lyrics at the top to provide contrast to the more upbeat chorus. Band member Steve Boone added a piano part and those city sound effects and the song went straight to number one. All around, people looking half dead, walking on the sidewalk, hotter than a match head. What a great lyric.
We started the set with the opening couple of minutes of War’s “City, Country, City” before mixing over to a song so urban, it didn’t need the word city in the title. Instead it had that black private dick who’s a sex machine to all the chicks. “Shaft” from the late, great Isaac Hayes, also known as Chef on South Park. Can you dig it? Following “Shaft” we returned to the body of “City, Country, City” with Lee Oscar on harmonica, Charles Miller on sax, Lonnie Jordon on organ, and Howard Scott on guitar. Well, we just hit the city limits on this one. Hope you enjoyed it. If you’re looking for the set lists or the show commentaries, we’ve got ‘em posted somewhere on billfitzhugh .com. Drop by and poke around ‘till you find ‘em. Or send me an email, I’ll point you in the right direction. I’m Bill Fitzhugh and I’ll be back with a fresh batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl in a New York minute and I hope you’ll join us right here in the Deep Tracks.
Segment 105
I’m just going to come right out and say this: I trust Wikipedia. Not for everything of course but for simple fact-checking like, for example, when you need to know the surface temperature of the sun or whether baboons are a highly dimorphic species, as you sometimes need to know. The reason I bring this up is that I was trying to find the term used by percussionists to refer to the action of tapping a drumstick against the rim of the snare, because that’s sound at the heart of today’s batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl. My friend, and frequent Way Back Studio co-conspirator, D. Victor Hawkins, said it’s called a rim shot. But I’ve always thought a rim shot was the drum and cymbal sting played to accentuate the punch line to a joke, and usually a bad one. So I looked it up. According to Wikipedia, there are three types of rim shots. The most common is the normal rimshot, played with the tip of the stick about three inches from the rim. The second is called a “ping shot,” where the tip is closer to the rim and produces a higher pitched sound. The third, called a “gock,” is produced by putting the tip of the stick at the center of the drum, the rim making contact closer to the hand than in a ping or normal rimshot.
The Wikipedia entry also warns that the rimshot should not be confused with the cross stick technique, in which the tip of the drumstick is placed on the head near one of the bearing edges, and the shaft of the stick is struck against the rim opposite the tip, creating a dry, high pitched “click”: this is called a rim knock. All of which just goes to show that too much information’s no better than too little. Because even after all that, I don’t know if the starting point of today’s set is a rim knock, a ping shot, a gock, or a normal rim shot. Listen to the first three songs and drop me an email if you can correctly identify what’s what. After that, things devolve into wood blocks and cowbells but they keep the mood going. So now, with or without you and with every breath you take, remember: time waits for no one, someday never comes, and here’s the boss.
Bruce Springsteen
I'm on Fire
Creedence Clearwater Revival
Someday Never Comes
Rolling Stones
Time Waits for No One
The Chambers Brothers
Time Has Come Today
U2
With or Without You
The Police
Every Breath You Take
The idea for that set came when I was listening to one of my all-time favorite Creedence songs, “Someday Never Comes.” The song fades in and out with Doug Clifford tapping his drumstick against the rim of his snare. It sounds like a train clacking down the tracks which makes it the perfect song to come out of Springsteen’s “I’m on Fire” which ends with Bruce howling like a train whistle over the tap, tap, tap of Max Weinberg knocking on his rim in the same way that percussionist Ray Cooper uses the technique to invoke the tick tock of a clock in the open and close of the Stones’s “Time Waits for No One.” In addition to that percussive technique, the songs also share a mood and a sense of coming to an understanding of something that had previously escaped comprehension. Something you just didn’t get until now. But that new understanding doesn’t bring a eureka moment of the ‘ah ha’ variety so much as an understated, almost disappointed, ohhh, now I get it. Someday never comes. Time waits for no one.
After that, the Chamber’s Brothers classic, “Time Has Come Today” substituting a cowbell for the rim knock but with a message that matched: ‘I’ve been loved and put aside, been crushed by the tumbling tide.’ The last two tracks in that set didn’t share the exact same percussive element as the first four but they sustained the mood. Like a man realizing he can’t live with or without her or who recognizes that he’s been lost without a trace since she left. And what’s worse, these things almost seemed inevitable. Like the passing of time, or every breath you take or the next batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl. From the Way Back Studios, I’m your host, Bill Fitzhugh. Thanks for listening. By the way if you‘d like to see our set lists or the show commentaries, just give me a Google and drop by Bill Fitzhugh.com. If you’ve got comments or suggestions you can also send me email from the site. I’d love to hear from you. I’ll be back sooner or later with a fresh batch, and I hope you can join us, right here in the Deep Tracks.
Segment 106
Here’s a concept for you, the concept album. Not to be confused with the rock opera, the concept album is, generally speaking, an album unified by a theme of some sort. We didn’t actually set out to have today’s batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl revolve around concept albums, but that’s how it turned out. And we ended up with a doozy of a mash-up. A breathless exercise in plunderphonics, sampledelica, and a little bit of bastard pop involving two bands you might expect in this category and one you might not. The Moody Blues and Pink Floyd are veterans of the concept. Both bands also did a lot of segues on their records which is a sign of the concept album but no guarantee. The concept behind the Moody Blues “In Search of the Lost Chord” is the search for spiritual fulfillment as well as the search for a mythical set of harmonically related notes. Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” is one of the best and most famous of the concept albums. It deals with the nature of the human experience from birth and aging, to greed, consumerism, madness, and death.
Jefferson Starship is the band you might not expect in this category. In fact there’s some argument about whether the album “Blows Against The Empire” is Paul Kantner’s first solo project or the first album by Jefferson Starship or the first by the Planet Earth Rock and Roll Orchestra. But in any event “Blows Against the Empire” is a narrative concept album about a plucky band of counter-culture types who steal a starship from the government and journey into space with the plan to restart the human race and presumably to build their city on rock and roll. Coincidentally, there’s a break in the middle of the Starship track “Hijack” that’s surrounded by acoustic guitars that reminded me of Queen’s “’39” which happens to be a story about a plucky band of space explorers who embark on what they think is a year-long voyage only to be surprised to find that Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity was actually correct and the loved ones they left behind are now all dead. So, on that happy note, let’s go searching for that lost chord.
Moody Blues
The Actor
Moody Blues
The Word
Jefferson Starship
Home / Have You Seen The Stars Tonight? / XM
Pink Floyd
Speak to Me / Breathe / On The Run
Jefferson Starship
Sunrise / Hijack (part 1)
Queen
'39 (part 1)
Beatles
Her Majesty
Queen
'39 (part 2)
Jefferson Starship
Hijack (part 2)
Sailing out into the grasshopper night to seek the righteous poison that’s the second part of Jefferson Starship’s “Hijack” from their concept album “Blows Against the Empire.” Earlier in the set we mashed up some other tracks from that album with a couple of tracks from The Moody Blues “In Search of the Lost Chord” and Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon.” See if you can follow this: We took “The Actor” and “The Word” from Lost Chord and mixed into Starship’s “Home,” which segues into “Have You Seen the Stars Tonight” and (ironically enough) a track called “XM” which we used to mix with Floyd’s “Speak To Me / Breathe [and] On the Run” from “Dark Side of the Moon” which then mixed with Starship’s “Sunrise” which segues into “Hijack” which has a false ending into which we inserted Queen’s “’39” which also has a false ending into which we inserted the shortest Beatle track on record, “Her Majesty,” which was originally found between “Mean Mr. Mustard” and “Polythene Pam” in the medley on side two of Abbey Road which is the other album in this set on which Alan Parsons worked, the first being “Dark Side of the Moon” which, like “Blows Against the Empire” features a lot of what is called musique concrete, which is what you call it when you take recorded sounds and other noises that aren’t inherently musical, and use them to make music.
As I said at the top of the show, it’s just a coincidence that this set ended up drawing on three concept albums, but with their use of musique concrete and all the internal segues, it’s not altogether surprising. And here’s another concept: we’re all out of time. So to paraphrase Mr. Floyd, “For long you live and high you fly, but only if you ride the tide. And balanced on the biggest wave, you race towards the Way Back Studios. I’m Bill Fitzhugh and I’ll be back next time with a fresh batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl. Right here, in the Deep Tracks.
Segment 107
If I could have your attention for the next twenty-five minutes or so, I think you'll find it worth your while. Now I know that's asking a lot what with your busy schedule and all, but if you just take your protein pills and put your helmet on, I'll serve up a tasty dollop of radio nostalgia and then you can get back to where you once belonged and whatever it was you were doing at the time. Now according to my calculations, sixty-two and a half percent of today's batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl comes from 1969. And it's ninety percent full of transitional shenanigans most notably with three tracks from The James Gang. Funk #48 came out on their debut album in 1969. A year later, the James Gang gave us Funk #49 and a track called Asshton Park which, for now, we'll call Funk #50. Musically, the songs are sort of variations of each other, so I took the liberty to remix the three tracks into five parts. Before that, let's call them, Funk numbers 46 and 47: Which is actually Cold Blood doing "I'm a Good Woman" with a funky segue into "You Just Can't Stop It" from the Doobie Brothers playing with the Memphis Horns.
After all the funkiness, we'll take a sharp left turn onto Abbey Road for Ringo's ode to cephalopod aquaculture, followed by Simon and Garfunkle's plea for customer satisfaction and Blood, Sweat, and Tears's famous declaration of complete contentment, all of which were recorded or released in 1969. A year that saw the Beatles give their last public performance, from the roof of Apple Records of all places. And the same year the Plastic Ono Band Recorded "Give Peace a Chance." Which just goes to show how crazy those darn hippies were. From the Way Back Studios here's Lydia Pense and Cold Blood.
Cold Blood
I'm a Good Woman
Doobie Brothers
You Just Can't Stop It
James Gang
Funk #48
James Gang
Funk #49 (part 1)
James Gang
Asshton Park
James Gang
Funk #49 (part 2)
James Gang
Asshton Park (repeated)
Beatles
Octopus's Garden
Simon & Garfunkle
Keep The Customer Satisfied
Blood, Sweat, & Tears
You've Made Me So Very Happy
With one exception, everything in that set was either recorded or released in 1969. That's when Simon and Garfunkle were in the studio building their Bridge Over Troubled Water from which we heard "Keep the Customer Satisfied" which ends with that wailing horn chart. Now I wanted to give credit where it's due but I looked on the album and on the CD and in All Music Guide and nowhere are the horn players given credit. Well, whoever they were, they led us into Blood, Sweat, and Tears who released their second album in 1969 featuring the hit "You’ve Made Me So Very Happy." Before the customer satisfaction, we were in the "Octopus's Garden" with you and the Beatles on Abbey Road, which was released, that's right, in 1969.
By the way, there's a guy who calls himself DJ Lobsterdust who does a very cool mashup of "Octopus's Garden" and Blondie's "Heart of Glass." Be sure to check that out on line sometime. At the top of the set, we heard "I'm a Good Woman" from Lydia Pense and Cold Blood from their debut album also from 1969. After that, the anomaly in the set was the Doobie Brothers "You Just Can't Stop It" from 1974's What Were Once Vices Are Now Things We Engage in on a Regular Basis. After that, the James Gang. They released Yer Album in 1969 the same year they recorded The James Gang Rides Again. Those two albums gave us "Funk #48" and "Funk #49" along with "Asshton Park" the instrumental which is essentially a variation on the rhythm track from "Funk 49." And we liked it so much, we played it twice. Well, it's the same old story. Everywhere I go, I get slandered, libeled, I hear words I never heard until I got to the Way Back Studios. I'm Bill Fitzhugh saying thanks for listening. I'll be back eventually with another batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl, right here in the Deep Tracks.
Segment 108
All right everybody, sharpen up your number two pencils. It’s time for another Way Back Studios pop quiz. Here’s question number one: Who was the first white artist to perform on Soul Train? The answer is unclear. Might’ve been Elton John, could’ve been David Bowie, or possibly Gino Vannelli. Okay, question number two: Where am I going? Well, that’s actually a trick question. It’s also the title to a song from Gino Vanelli’s album Storm At Sunup. And not surprisingly, it’s the song at the heart of today’s batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl. Here’s what happened: I got an email a while back from my friend Karen Gilder. She told me she’d gone down to New Orleans to hear Gino at one of the casinos. She had third row center seats in a room with maybe 300 other people. “I felt like I was in high school all over again,” she said. “Giggling the entire time.” Karen said the show was terrific. In fact, her review was so enthusiastic, I came out to the Way Back Studios and dropped a needle on Storm at Sunup.
The record’s made up almost entirely of keyboards, synthesizers, percussion, and Gino’s vocals. “Where Am I Going?” is seven minutes, forty-seven seconds of melo-dramatic pop and tight jazz rock, with a couple of tempo changes that allow for some tasty transitions. And there was something about the keyboards and synthesizers that reminded me of Stevie Wonder, so I found a couple of Stevie tracks to mix with Gino. But it wasn’t quite enough. So. I had to find another song. So. I thought of Peter Gabriel. So I grabbed his 1986 release, “So.” Co-produced by the always atmospheric Daniel Lanois, we found a moody little track to lead us into the whole Gino and Stevie thing. But that still wasn’t enough. So, we dug deeper until we came to Brian Eno. And speaking of atmospheric, we’ve got an excerpt from his album Ambient 1, Music for Airports. And taking us quietly to the airport, is everybody’s favorite lower middle class hillbilly hipster, here’s Ricki Lee Jones.
Ricki Lee Jones
On Saturday Afternoons in 1963
Brian Eno
1/1
Captain Beyond
Voyages of Past Travelers
Peter Gabriel
Mercy Street
Gino Vannelli
Where Am I Going (part 1)
Stevie Wonder
All in Love is Fair
Gino Vannelli
Where Am I Going (part 2)
Stevie Wonder
Heaven is Ten Zillion Light Years Away
Gino Vannelli
Where Am I Going (part 3)
I do love the sound of those synthesizers. That’s Gino Vannelli’s brother Joe playing but I have no idea what because they didn’t bother to list the specific instruments on the album sleeve. It just says synthesizers. We just deconstructed Gino’s synthesizer driven “Where Am I Going” and intermixed the three parts with a couple of tracks from Stevie Wonder. Now I’m guessing Stevie was playing some sort of synthesizer on “Heaven is 10 Zillion Light Years Away” but since they didn’t bother to put the information on that album sleeve either, I can’t say for sure. About the only thing I can say for sure is that one of the background singers on the record is Paul Anka. Earlier in the set we heard “All in Love is Fair” with Stevie playing both acoustic piano and Fender Rhodes and we know this because they do list the instruments on the sleeve for his album “Innervisions.” By the way and coincidentally, it turns out Gino was the opening act for Stevie during a tour in the late 70’s.
We opened the set “On Saturday Afternoons in 1963.” That’s the title of the track from Ricki Lee Jones debut album, followed by former Roxy Music keyboardist, Brian Eno with an excerpt from his album Ambient 1, Music for Airports. That led us to synthesizer afficiando Peter Gabriel playing a CMI, a Prophet, and a CS80, whatever that is. From his album, “So,” we heard a song dedicated to the poet Anne Sexton who wrote a play in 1969 called “Mercy Street.” Confessing all the secret things in the warm velvet box, to the priest, he’s the deejay, he can handle the shocks from the Way Back Studios. I’m Bill Fitzhugh. Thanks for listening. You can find the set lists and show commentaries at billfitzhugh.com along with the shocking photos and the truth behind the rumors. I’ll be back with a fresh batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl next time, and I hope you can join us, right here in the Deep Tracks.
Segment 109
One of the things we like to do here in the Way Back Studios is play with your expectations. This assumes a certain familiarity with the music on your part like, for example, when you hear the medley on side two of Abbey Road. You expect “Sun King” will be followed inevitably by “Mean Mr. Mustard,” “Polythene Pam,” and “She Came In Through the Bathroom Window.” But what if we re-insert “Her Majesty” between “Mr. Mustard” and “Polythene Pam” the way it was originally assembled? And what if the Joe Cocker version of “Bathroom Window” comes on where you’re expecting the Beatles to continue? Well, it just makes your ears smile. That’s the whole idea. And we’ll be doing that Beatles / Joe Cocker mix in a few shows but today’s batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl assumes you are familiar with Todd Rundgren’s magnum opus Something / Anything. I got an email recently from Joe Lewis in Cary, Illinois. He had a stack of mixing ideas for me, including one from side two of Something / Anything, the so-called cerebral side of the album. The side begins with “Intro” also known as the Sounds of the Studio game which goes straight into the instrumental “Breathless.” Joe didn’t have any specific ideas, he just thought there might be something fun to do in place of “Breathless.”
Well, I’d been meaning to give that a try, and I found exactly what the doctor ordered on Rick Wakeman’s album, The Six Wives of Henry VIII. Since all the songs on that album are instrumentals, they don’t have anything literal to do with the biographical facts of the women in question. In the album’s liner notes Rick explained that the songs are his personal conception of the various wives in relation to his keyboard instruments which goes a long way toward explaining how people were thinking back in 1973. Now since Todd and Rick are all about keyboards and synthesizers, I figured it made sense to pile on a few more played by the likes of Edgar Winter, Jan Hammer, Kraftwerk, and Three Dog Night. But before we go any further, let’s join Todd in his studio, and see what he’s up to.
Todd Rundgren
Intro
Rick Wakeman
Anne of Cleves (part 1)
Edgar Winter
Jump Right Out
Rick Wakeman
Anne of Cleves (part 2)
3 Dog Night
Chest Fever
Rick Wakeman
Anne of Cleves (part 3)
Kraftwerk
Autobahn (6th part)
Jan Hammer
Miami Vice
Todd Rundgren
Breathless
That’s Todd Rundgren’s “Breathless” from his album Something / Anything. At the very top of the set, we did the track that you expect to lead into “Breathless”: “Intro” also known as the Sounds of the Studio game. But instead of letting nature takes its course and leaving well enough alone, we did some hand mixing into Rick Wakeman’s instrumental “Anne of Cleves” from his album The Six Wives of Henry VIII. Anne was Henry’s fourth wife, and one of the few to meet a happy ending. Two of his wives died of natural causes, two died after giving birth, and two died from having their heads cut off. By the way, Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard were the wives who didn’t need to go hat shopping after being married to the King. Now, Anne of Cleves was married to Henry for about 6 months. As I’m sure you could tell just by listening to Rick’s instrumental, their marriage was annulled on the grounds they hadn’t consummated it as well as on some other nuptial technicality. But lucky for Anne, she ended up with a good settlement instead of with her neck on the chopping block.
However, here, she wasn’t so lucky. We took her and chopped her into three parts, inserting Edgar Winter’s “Jump Right Out” in the first break and Three Dog Night’s version of “Chest Fever” in the second. By the way, as far as I know, Rick Wakeman has been through only three wives all of whom still have their heads. That part of the set was inspired by a suggestion from Joe Lewis in Cary, Illinois. If you’ve got a segue idea or if you just want to say hi, drop by billfitzhugh.com and send me a note. I’d love to hear from you. After all that hand mixing, we slipped into an excerpt from Kraftwerk’s twenty-two minute long “Autobahn” and then mixed into Jan Hammer’s “Miami Vice” one of several variations of that tune that he recorded for the television series which was one of the first to be broadcast in stereo. From the Way Back Studios, I’m Bill Fitzhugh. Thanks for listening. I’ll be back before you know it with another batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl and I hope you’ll join us, right here in the Deep Tracks.
Segment 110
Ever taken one of those aptitude tests that involves looking at a group of pictures or a list of things and deciding which thing doesn’t belong with the others? Take this list for example: a snake, a skunk, a scallop, and a senator. Obviously the scallop doesn’t belong, right? And not just because the others aren’t bivalves. Well, you could use the artists in today’s batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl the same way. I’ll read the list. You decide which one doesn’t belong. The Allman Brothers, Led Zeppelin, Robin Trower, Jimi Hendrix, Donovan. It’s safe to say the acoustic folk hippie guy doesn’t belong with those heavy rocking electric guitar guys, right? Well, actually, no. And I’m as surprised as you are. Here’s how we got there. I started putting this set together with two Zeppelin tracks, both of which are powered by John Bonham’s huge drum licks and both of which have false endings and other elements that are perfect for what we do here in the Way Back Studios. So there I was, chopping the two songs into five parts and trying to figure out what to stick in the holes when an idea came out of left field. It was during a quiet passage in one of the Zepplin tracks that Donovan came to mind. What I didn’t realize at the time was how perfect that was. Not just for the transition but because of the history of The Hurdy Gurdy Man.
There are contradictory stories out there but here’s the one I like: According to Richie Unterberger writing for All Music dot com, the electric guitar, drums, and arrangement for Hurdy Gurdy Man are done by Jimmy Page, John Bonham, and John Paul Jones. Three quarters of Led Zeppelin. In fact Jones and Page have said that Zeppelin itself was formed during the sessions for the Hurdy Gurdy Man album. Another story has it that Donovan wanted Jimi Hendrix to record the song or at least the guitar part but he was unavailable. Still, it’s a nice coincidence that we have Jimi in the second half of the set along with Jimi’s aural doppelganger, Robin Trower. As you might expect, this one’s not for the faint of heart, so get the wax out of your hearing holes and cinch up your seat belts. Here are the Allman Brothers.
The Allman Brothers
Trouble No More
Led Zeppelin
The Ocean (part 1)
Donovan
Hurdy Gurdy Man
Led Zeppelin
The Ocean (part 2)
Led Zeppelin
Hots on for Nowhere (part 1)
Led Zeppelin
The Ocean (part 3)
Led Zeppelin
Hots on for Nowhere (part 2)
Robin Trower
Day of the Eagle (part 1)
Jimi Hendrix
Born Under a Bad Sign (excerpt)
Robin Trower
Day of the Eagle (part 2)
That’s Robin Trower from Bridge of Sighs. I had the eight track tape for that one, had the album too but somewhere along the line it disappeared from my collection. Now all I’ve got is the CD, so I’m just telling you that set wasn’t ALL vinyl. Couldn’t have been because the Hendrix we played came from a posthumous release called Blues that came out in 1994, long after they stopped pressing albums. And since I’m in a confessional mood, I have to admit I played about twenty-four seconds of Zeppelin’s “The Ocean” from a CD simply because I’d need three turntables in my system to do that set and I’ve only got two. But I promise, the rest was all vinyl. And, except for the Allman Brothers at the top, the first half of the set was all Led Zeppelin, even when we were playing Donovan. The story goes that all the members of Zeppelin, except Robert Plant, played on “Hurdy Gurdy Man.” But there are other sources who say a guy named Alan Parker (not the film director) played the electric guitar part. In any event, we dropped the “Hurdy Gurdy Man” into a break between parts of Zeppelin’s “The Ocean” which we broke up into three parts. We also broke “Hots on For Nowhere” into two parts and mixed that in for your listening pleasure.
The second half of the set started off with Trower’s “Day of the Eagle,” a song that starts off like a house on fire, then, about halfway through, it slows to a nice little blues where the bass player, James Dewar, slips into an indirect quote of the bass line for “Born Under a Bad Sign,” a song made famous for some by Albert King and for others by Cream. But here we played an excerpt from the Jimi Hendrix version. Wine and women is all I crave, a big legged woman gonna carry me to … the Way Back Studios. By the way, if you’ve got any questions, you can probably find the answers at billfitzhugh.com. I’m Bill Fitzhugh. Thanks for listening. I’ll be back whenever they let me with a fresh batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl and I hope you’ll join us, right here in the DeepTracks.
Segment 111
In keeping with our policy of truth in advertising here in the Way Back Studios, let me just say right up front that today’s batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl is really two short sets held together by little more than a few licks on a cowbell and some Three Dog Night. The first set is one of those percussion mixes that comes naturally with early Chicago and Santana. In this case, CTA’s classic cover of a Steve Winwood track that we’ll split in two, during the extended percussion break, and mix into a track from Santana’s third album before returning to the Chicago. After that, we go live to the Forum in Los Angeles for some Three Dog Night before getting to that second set which consists of an improbable mix involving Poco, Deep Purple, and Rory Gallagher. Right about now you’re probably thinking, you can’t segue from Poco to Deep Purple, can you? Well, admittedly, it’s one of those things you don’t want to try at home but I’m a trained professional, so, trust me, just let go and let the cowbell carry you forward.
The idea for this bit came when I heard a Deep Purple track I’d forgotten a long time ago. It’s a track from the 1974 release, Burn. When I heard it recently, I couldn’t help but notice that the cowbell part is virtually identical to the one in the opening track from Poco’s live album, Deliverin’. And while the transition from Poco to Purple is fine and dandy, the best was yet to come. Because it turned out the Deep Purple track has a false ending. Actually three false endings in row that sound exactly like the opening to a Rory Gallagher track from his album Photo Finish. It’s one of the best little segues we’ve stumbled across in years. So keep your hearing holes open for that. And by the way, just so you know we’re really working with vinyl here, somewhere near the end of the set, you can hear me bump the turntable, just like we did in the old days. Oops. Just think of it as a bit of radio authenticity. And now, before we get to all those cowbells, here’s perhaps the most recognizable bass line in the Deep Tracks library.
Chicago Transit Authority
I'm a Man (part 1)
Santana
Batuka
Chicago Transit Authority
I'm a Man (part 2)
Three Dog Night
Nobody
Poco
I Guess You Made It
Deep Purple
You Fool No One (part 1)
Rory Gallagher
Cruise On Out
Deep Purple
You Fool No One (part 2)
In keeping with our rule that if you find a hole in a song, you have to stick something in it, we took Rory Gallagher’s “Cruise On Out” and stuck it into that perfect little opening we found in Deep Purple’s “You Fool No One.” What’s funny about that is that the original idea for that part of the set was based on the similar cowbell lick in both the Deep Purple and the Poco that preceded it, a song called “I Guess You Made It.” But then, much to my surprise, the Purple had that perfect false ending that led us to that beauty of a segue with “Cruise On Out.” Now for those of you keeping score at home, this is the second batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl featuring a cowbell segue. And speaking of cowbells, I can’t hear one without thinking of Christopher Walken. He was in a very funny Saturday Night Live sketch spoofing the VH1 show, “Behind the Music.” In the sketch, Walken plays the producer during the recording of Blue Oyster Cult’s “Don’t Fear The Reaper.” During the sketch, Walken keeps giving these loopy speeches punctuated with the phrase, “I gotta have more cowbell, baby.” Well, we got your cowbell right here.
We bridged the two halves of the set with “Nobody” by Three Dog Night, Live at the Forum. At the top of the set, two more songs with plenty of cowbell. We did a mix from Chicago Transit Authority’s “I’m a Man” into “Batuka” from Santana’s third album. “Batuka” by the way is the Swahili word for cowbell. Just kidding. I think it actually means ‘awakening.’ Well, as Rory Gallagher said, when the fat man plays that upright, he freeze you at the knees, his band’s in full control, of 37 and one half of the keys to the Way Back Studio. If you’re looking for any of the the set lists or the show commentaries, just drop by website, billfitzhugh.com and you’ll find ‘em there along with the rest of the story. I’m Bill Fitzhugh. Thanks for listening. I’ll be back sooner or later with a fresh batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl, and I hope you’ll join us, right here in the Deep Tracks.
Segment 112
One of the many things that irks me about FM’s classic rock format is that they more or less abandoned acoustic artists in favor of hard rockers only. Another annoyance is how they only play songs you’ve heard ten thousand times out of the fear that you won’t listen to something you don’t recognize in the first five seconds. So it’s not surprising that one of the many things I love about working in the Deep Tracks is that I can play anything from the library without worrying about bogus research designed to find songs that people don’t dislike instead of just finding great songs. Today’s batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl features six songs you will most likely never hear on FM rock radio, one song you might hear once a year, and one you’ll hear now and then. All of which helps explain why we’re listening to Deep Tracks. The set starts folky and acoustic and ends up with a classic from the Animals. Before that we’ll hear Country Joe and the Fish sounding so much like the Doors it’s scary, with a track from their album Electric Music for the Mind and Body which comes out of the Doors doing a bluesy one from L.A. Woman.
J.J. Cale provides the transition between the acoustic opening and the bluesy end with a little something from his 1976 release, Troubadour, the album that gave us the original version of “Cocaine.” In the first half of the set we’ll hear Taj Mahal doing an American folk standard about love gone bad to the point of murder. We’ll also hear an original from Bonnie Raitt and one from a guy you may never have heard of. Michael Gulezian comes from the Leo Kottke, John Fahey school of acoustic picking. He released his first album on his own label, Aardvark Records. After Fahey heard it, he approached Gulezian about re-issuing the record on Fahey’s Takoma label. They dropped a couple of songs and added a couple of new ones and released it under the title, Unspoken Intentions in 1979, which remains one of my favorite albums. But first, satellite delivered from the Way Back Studios, here’s James Taylor from One Man Dog.
James Taylor
New Tune
Michael Gulezian
Ian and Nisa
Taj Mahal
Frankie and Albert
Bonnie Raitt
Nothing Seems to Matter
J.J. Cale
You Got Me on So Bad
The Doors
Cars Hiss by My Window
Country Joe & the Fish
Bass Strings
The Animals
Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood
Originally recorded by the great Nina Simone in 1964, that’s The Animal’s version from a year later, a song that Rolling Stone ranked 315 out of the best 500 songs of all time. Before that some Electric Music For The Mind and Body. That’s the title of the first album by Country Joe and The Fish, a group most people remember for the so-called “Fish Cheer” as performed at Woodstock along with the “I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die Rag” which is really a shame because they were so much more than that. Somewhere in the middle of the set, we opened The Doors L.A. Woman, the last album featuring the original quartet. We heard the track, “Cars Hiss By My Window.” At the end of which we heard Jim Morrison doing his best harmonica imitation, leading us into Country Joe and the Fish, doing “Bass Strings” and sounding as much like the Doors as the Doors ever did. We also heard J.J. Cale’s “You Got Me On So Bad.” And Bonnie Raitt before that doing one of her own compositions, a song called “Nothing Seems To Matter.” And from the album Oh So Good ‘n’ Blues, Taj Mahal gave us “Frankie and Albert” which is a variation on an old folk tune also called “Frankie and Johnny.” A song that’s been recorded by over 250 artists, from Leadbelly and Mississippi John Hurt to Bob Dylan and Stevie Wonder. In fact even Lindsey Lohan did a version, in the film “A Prairie Home Companion.”
At the very top of the set, James Taylor gave us a little ditty called “New Tune” which we followed with the instrumental “Ian and Nisa” from a fine guitarist and composer named Michael Gulezian and his album Unspoken Intentions. We heard it off the original vinyl but I think it’s now available on CD and it comes highly recommended. Well, I’m just a soul whose intentions are good but whose time has run out. If you’re looking for the set lists or show commentaries or if you’re just wondering ‘who is this guy?’ you’ll find it all at billfitzhugh.com. I’m Bill Fitzhugh. Thanks for listening. I’ll have another batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl next time and I hope you’ll join us, right here in the Deep Tracks.
Segment 113
It was released in the U.S. on October 1st, 1969. Between the US and the UK charts, it was number one for a total of seventeen weeks. It’s been certified as twelve times platinum and Rolling Stone Magazine ultimately declared it the 14th greatest album of all time. In other words, it’s one of the most well known records of a generation, maybe two. The album? Abbey Road. On side two you’ll find the famous medley, one of those things FM rock radio used to play in its entirety almost without exception. If you turned on the radio back in the day and you heard “You Never Give Me Your Money” you could name the six songs that would follow over the next sixteen minutes. And since this beloved medley is at the heart of today’s batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl, you might ask: Bill, why don’t you just leave well enough alone? Well, the answer is because you can get well enough alone the rest of the week. Besides, something this well known provides the perfect opportunity for me to play with your expectations, one of the things we live for here in the Way Back Studios.
I’d been working on an idea involving “Sun King” (the second track in the medley) and “Gnik Nus,” from the Beatles’ Love cd, where they took the vocal track from “Sun King” and played it in reverse, renaming it, “Gnik Nus” which is “Sun King” spelled backwards. Then, one day, I got an email from Jay Snider in Bayville, New Jersey. He suggested a segue involving “Sun King” and an instrumental from Fleetwood Mac in the Peter Green era. Well, a little research uncovered a George Harrison quote saying that “Sun King” was, in fact, inspired by this very instrumental. So that’s how we’ll work our way into the medley. And once we’re in, the fun begins. We’ll hear “Gnik Nus/Sun King” mash-up and we’ll reinsert “Her Majesty” to her original position so you can hear how the medly was first assembled. Then we’ll have some fun with Joe Cocker, coming through the water closet window before before we exit the medley in favor of Leonard Cohen, the Young-Holt Trio, and The Capitals, for reasons I can’t possibly explain. But before we get to that Fleetwood Mac instrumental, here’s a quick one from Savoy Brown.
Savoy Brown
Gypsy
Fleetwood Mac
Albatross
Beatles
(Medley)Sun King / Gnik Nus / Mearn Mr. Mustard / Her Majesty / Polythene Pam
Joe Cocker
She Came in Through the Bathroom Window (part 1)
Beatles
She Came in Through the Bathroom Window (excerpt)
Joe Cocker
She Came in Through the Bathroom Window (part 2)
Leonard Cohen
The Future
The Young-Holt Trio
Wack Wack
The Capitols
Cool Jerk
“Cool Jerk” and “Wack Wack.” Two songs that seem to roll off the same track. “Wack Wack” was released in 1967 by the Young-Holt Trio. Bassist Eldee Young and drummer Redd Holt had been the rhythm section for the Ramsey Lewis Trio before setting out on their own for a while. “Cool Jerk” was released by The Capitols in 1966. It was a huge hit which explains why you can find it at least a hundred r&b and rock compilation albums. Todd Rundgren includes a few bars of the song in the medley on side two of his album, A Wizard, A True Star. And speaking of medley’s on the second side of albums... We took a chunk of the famous Abbey Road medley and had our way with it. We took “Gnik Nus” the backwards vocal track from the Beatles Love album and mixed it with “Sun King” going forward. Then, following “Mean Mr. Mustard,” we reinserted “Her Majesty” where it was original positioned. The story goes that Paul didn’t like how it sounded in that sequence, so he told the engineer to cut it out and toss it. But the engineer had been told never to toss anything the Beatles recorded. So he cut it out as instructed but then, at the end of the record, he spliced in fourteen seconds of leader tape followed by the twenty-three second track, “Her Majesty.” And there it stayed, until now.
After that, we returned to “Polythene Pam” before we shoved Joe Cocker through the bathroom window and did a little hand mixing back and forth between his version and the original. The set opened with two instrumentals. The dreamy “Gypsy” by Savoy Brown which led us into the Fleetwood Mac instrumental, “Albatross,” a song that inspired the Beatles to write what was originally called “Here Comes The Sun King.” Later shortened to “Sun King” to avoid confusion with you know what. After the remixed medley we time traveled to “The Future,” the title track to Leonard Cohen’s 1992 album. As Mr. Cohen said, “Give me back my broken night, my mirrored room, my secret life, it’s lonely here, there’s no one left to torture…” in the Way Back Studios. That’s all I’m saying. Still, if you’re looking for more, you can track it down on billfitzhugh.com or Amazon or drop by your favorite independent book store. They’ll explain the whole thing. I’m Bill Fitzhugh. Thanks for listening. I’ll be back sooner or later with another batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl and I hope you’ll join us, right here in the Deep Tracks.
Segment 114
Pianos, like politics, can make for strange bedfellows, and today’s batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl stands as exhibit A in that argument. Though it may not sound like it, there’s usually some sort of method to the madness that leads to the construction of these sets. In this instance, we started with a suggestion from my pal Jay Snider in New Jersey. This is Jay’s second idea to get into a mix, making my job that much easier. Jay said he thought the opening piano part of “Hey Bulldog” sounded a lot like the slower, descending piano part at the end of “One Man’s Ceiling Is Another Man’s Floor.” And sure enough, it works. Now, since “Hey Bulldog” ends on a fade, making potential transitions less elegant, my best bet was to build in the other direction, to find a song with piano leading into “One Man’s Ceiling.” As fate would have it, I found the song I needed on an album with a cartoon drawing of a big bulldog on the front. Ben Sidran’s Don’t Let Go, from 1974. We’ll hear a humorous little ditty about exercising self-control. Now Ben Sidran’s singing style has always reminded me of Mose Allison and I’ve always wanted to do a set putting them side by side, so to scratch that itch, I took a Duke Ellington composition that Mose covered on his album Middle Class White Boy.
And since Mose tends toward jazzy, I found myself backing up into June, Bonnie, Ruth, and Anita – the Pointer Sisters from their jazzy album That’s a Plenty. From there I just kept working backwards in search of more pianos. Not surprisingly we ran into Dr. John but somewhat surprisingly we found him tickling the ivories for a Maria Muldour classic. Before that we’ll hear one from Randy Newman’s Good Old Boys, a plea to the Commander in Chief coming on the heels of a Wild Tale from Graham Nash. But we’ll start with one from After The Goldrush. On piano from the Way Back Studios, here’s Neil Young.
Neil Young
Birds
Graham Nash
I Miss You
Randy Newman
Mr. President
Maria Muldour
Don't You Feel My Leg
Pointer Sisters
Shaky Flat Blues
Mose Allison
I'm Just a Lucky So 'n' So
Ben Sidren
Down to the Bone
Paul Simon
One Man's Ceiling Is Another Man's Floor
Beatles
Hey Bulldog
Nine tracks, plenty of piano, and all vinyl, the last of which from Yellow Submarine, the only Beatles album generally considered to be non-essential, that’s one called “Hey Bulldog.” Leading into that, based on a suggestion from New Jersey Jay Snider, we had Barry Beckett playing piano for Rhymin’ Paul Simon on the track “One Man’s Ceiling Is Another Man’s Floor.” At the top we heard Neil Young on piano telling his lover that it’s over, followed by Graham Nash singing about his broken heart in a simple song called, “I Miss You.” After that, the first of two songs produced by Lenny Waronker. First, with his childhood pal, Randy Newman we heard “Mr. President (Have Pity On The Working Man)”. That’s followed by the sultry tones and supply thighs of Maria Muldaur backed by none other than Dr. John on piano. The classic: “Don’t You Feel My Leg.”
We also pulled two tracks from albums released on the Blue Thumb label, both from1974. First, we heard the Pointer Sisters’ “Shaky Flat Blues” featuring Tom Salisbury on piano. The second blue thumber was a guy who doesn’t need to hire anybody to play keyboards. Ben Sidran, perhaps best known for his work with the Steve Miller Band. But this time from one of his many solo albums, this one called Don’t Let Go, we heard his amusing little ditty, “Down To The Bone.” And in between those two, the guy from Tippo, Mississippi who blazed the trail for Ben Sidran, Mr. Mose Allison covering the Duke Ellington classic, “I’m Just a Lucky So ‘n’ So.” Well, like Paul Simon was singing earlier, There’s been some strange goin’s on, and some folks have come and gone from the Way Back Studios and I’m about to be one ‘em. And remember: many of the answers to your questions can be found at billfitzhugh.com. I’m Bill Fitzhugh thanks for listening. I’ll be back sooner or later with a fresh batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl and I hope you’ll join us, right here in the Deep Tracks.
Segment 115
To casual listeners, it may seem like the Way Back Studio is a lawless backwater where chaos reigns but in fact we’re guided by a set of rules. First, we refuse to leave well enough alone. Second, if we find a hole in a song, we stick something in it. And third, given any opportunity, we toy with your musical expectations. Another rule that offers guidance says that you can’t make two songs segue if they don’t want to. Doesn’t matter how hard you try, you can’t make a smooth transition from, say, Janis Ian to Black Sabbath. In other words, the segues determine the songs we play, not the other way around. Now, today’s batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl started out as an amusing deconstruction of the big hit track from Paul Simon’s Graceland. The one about that guy with the short attention span and the nights that are so long. The song breaks neatly into three sections and has two elements that begged for segue, first the big horn parts and second, that great bass line break by Bakithi Kumalo that’s played forward first, and then flipped around and played backwards. The horn part sent me to Stevie Wonder’s Songs In The Key of Life and his tribute to the giants of jazz.
And speaking of jazz, Kumalo’s bass line sent me to Joni Mitchell’s collaboration with the great Charles Mingus and a song we’ve played before about a dry cleaner from somewhere in Iowa which features Jaco Pastorius on bass. As for playing with your expectations, we return to Songs In The Key of Life. It was released long before the CD era and with albums, you’re locked into the song sequence. Turntables lacking, as they do, a ‘random’ button. So halfway through side one, as you listened to the great jazz fusion of “Contusion” you knew that when it reached its sudden end, it would be followed immediately and inevitably by the opening horns of the next track. But not today, so much for your expectations. Elsewhere in the set, we’ll hear an instrumental from Sea Level. But first, from the album To the Heart, here’s a nice bit of jazz rock from Mark-Almond.
Mark-Almond
Busy On The Line
Sea Level
Storm Warning
Stevie Wonder
Contusion
Paul Simon
You Can Call Me Al (part 1)
Stevie Wonder
Sir Duke
Paul Simon
You Can Call Me Al (part 2)
Joni Mitchell
Dry Cleaner From Des Moines
Paul Simon
You Can Call Me Al (part 3)
Paul Simon wrapping up the set with the final third of “You Can Call Me Al.” After putting that set together I realized that, with the exception of the two instrumentals, the set told four different stories. And even the titles to the instrumentals suggest narratives. First, Sea Level’s “Storm Warning” and then “Contusion.” But the main story and the starting point for building that set was the one about a guy named Al. A guy like a lot of us, with a lot more questions than answers. Like, why am I soft in the middle when the rest of my life is so hard? Where’s my wife and family? And what if I die here? Then there was Mark-Almond at the top of the set, telling the tale of the guy waiting for a call from that girl who says she’s never home, even when there’s a busy signal on her line. Sounds an awful lot like a girl I dated once.
After Stevie Wonder gave us that “Contusion” earlier, he told us a less bruising story about the greats of jazz: Count Basie, Louis Armstrong, Glen Miller, Ella Fitzgerald, and the king of all, Sir Duke, also known as Edward Kennedy Ellington. Now, Charles Mingus was a jazz great too but Stevie didn’t have time to mention everybody. So instead, we had Joni Mitchell working with Mingus and Jaco Pastorious to create the tale of “The Dry Cleaner From Des Moines,” a guy who could put a coin in the door of a john and get twenty for one, like Midas in a polyester suit who went looking for the set lists and the show commentaries and found them, along with several stories I wrote in the form of novels at billfitzhugh.com. I’m Bill Fitzhugh. Thanks for listening. And remember, if you’re looking for a photo opportunity or a shot at redemption and you don’t want to end up in a cartoon graveyard, join us next time right here in the comfort of the Way Back Studios for a fresh batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl satellite delivered from the dusty fringes of Los Angeles to the Deep Tracks.
Segment 116
Back around 1975 I went shopping for a new pair of speakers. The salesman steered me towards a pair of Klipsch Heresys, the smallest speakers Klipsch made at the time. And I think they weighed about fifty pounds each. They came in couple of different finishes, but to save fifty bucks, I bought the unfinished version. And 35 years later, after having the woofer re-coned once, I’m still using them here in the Way Back Studios. At the store where I bought them, they used one album to demonstrate the speakers. The album was called I’ve Got The Music In Me by Thelma Houston and Pressure Cooker, a group of some of LA’s best studio musicians, including Tom Scott, Jim Gordon, Larry Carlton and others. It was produced by Sheffield Labs and recorded direct to master disc and the sound is unbelievable. There’s an instrumental called “Dish Rag” featuring a trombone part that still makes the hair stand up on my neck. And that’s the song that made the sale.
But today’s batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl features a different song from the album, a cover of “Got To Get You Into My Life.” The horns at the end mix nicely into the horns at the start of the fab four’s “Magical Mystery Tour” whose horns later segue beautifully into a track by the Electric Light Orchestra which is the song that got me started on this set to begin with. I heard “Boy Blue” recently and every time the chorus came on, I found myself singing the chorus to “Hang On Sloopy.” Trust me, this is a very cool little segue in the middle of the set. And as luck would have it, Sloopy ends cold with a big drum lick that matches the drums at the start of “I’m Just a Singer in a Rock and Roll Band,” a song with two false endings. Well, as you know, when we find a song with a hole, we stick something in it. In this case we stayed with the rock and roll theme. But first, we’ll hear another Beatles cover from a former member of Sha Na Na. From the Way Back Studios, here’s Henry Gross.
Henry Gross
Help
Thelma Houston
Got to Get You Into My Life
The Beatles
Magical Mystery Tour
Electric Light Orchestra
Boy Blue
The McCoys
Hang On Sloopy
The Moody Blues
I'm Just a Singer in a Rock and Roll Band (part 1)
The Beatles
Rock 'n' Roll Music
The Moody Blues
I'm Just a Singer in a Rock and Roll Band (part 2)
Elton John
Your Sister Can't Twist But She Can Rock and Roll
The Moody Blues
I'm Just a Singer in a Rock and Roll Band (part 3)
Written by John Lodge, who won an ASCAP songwriting award for it, that’s from The Moody Blues album, Seventh Sojourn. The song was John’s way of saying, don’t look to me for any answers, “I’m Just A Singer (in a rock and roll band).” We broke the track into three parts and, in keeping with the rock and roll theme, inserted “Your Sister Can’t Twist (but she can rock and roll)” and the Beatles covering Chuck Berry’s “Rock ‘n’ Roll Music.” We opened the set with Henry Gross covering the Beatles’ “Help” followed by Thelma Houston and Pressure Cooker from the album I’ve Got The Music In Me, a direct-to-master-disc recording that’s hands down the best sounding album in my collection. If you can find a clean copy of this record, get it.
From Thelma’s cover of the Beatles “Got To Get You Into My Life” we mixed into the Fab Four themselves doing “Magical Mystery Tour” which then segued into The Electric Light Orchestra doing “Boy Blue” and from there we went to Union City, Indiana, for The McCoys featuring Randy Zehringer and his brother Rick who later changed his last name to Derringer. The McCoys also featured Randy Jo Hobbs who would go on to play bass with both Johnny and Edgar Winter. “Hang On Sloopy” was a #1 hit in 1965 and it’s the official rock song of the state of Ohio. Why Ohio, not Indiana? Well there seems to be some argument about whether the band was actually from Dayton, and not Union City, Indiana, not far away. Another one of life’s great mysteries, unlike our set lists and show commentaries which you can find at billfitzhugh.com along with the truth behind the rumors and a list of recommended reading. Well I’m just a deejay on a rock and roll station and I’ll be back with another batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl next time, and I hope you’ll join us. From the Way Back Studios, I’m Bill Fitzhugh in the Deep Tracks.
Segment 117
The Smoker You Drink, The Player You Get. That’s the title of Joe Walsh’s second solo album. Its most famous track is “Rocky Mountain Way,” but it also gave us the FM rock standard, “Meadows,” a song I can’t listen to without singing the chorus for Deep Purple’s “Woman From Tokyo.” The two songs rely on a remarkably similar guitar riff, which is exactly what got us started on today’s set. Funny thing is that while the set started that way, it ended up being less about Joe Walsh and Ritchie Blackmore than about a couple of guys who worked behind-the-scenes at Hitsville, U.S.A., also known as Motown. Now when you think of Motown, you either think of their signature acts, like the Four Tops, the Supremes, the Temptations, and all the rest, or you think of the guys behind the curtain, like label founder Berry Gordy, or the Funk Brothers, Motown’s house band, or the famous songwriting and producing team of Holland, Dozier, and Holland. But there was another songwriting and producing team at Motown whose names weren’t as well known, but whose songs were. Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong wrote a lot of Motown’s biggest hits, among them, “I Heard it Through the Grapevine” “Papa Was a Rolling Stone” and “Psychedelic Shack.”
But the songwriting teams at Motown weren’t set in stone. Every now and then, members would switch teams, as was the case for the song at the center of today’s batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl. “I Know I’m Losing You,” was written by Norman Whitfield and Eddie Holland, along with Cornelius Grant who was the guitarist for the Temptations. The song topped the R&B charts and made it to #8 on the pop charts. It was later covered by Rare Earth and Rod Stewart, among others. So, keeping all that in mind, from the Way Back Studios, here are six songs, mixed in twelve parts all of which adhere to the Motown motto: “It’s what’s in the grooves that counts.”
Rod Stewart
(I Know) I'm Losin' You (part 1)
Rare Earth
(I Know) I'm Losin' You (part 1)
The Temptations
Psychedelic Shack
Rare Earth
(I Know) I'm Losin' You (part 2)
Rod Stewart
(I Know) I'm Losin' You (part 2)
Rare Earth
(I Know) I'm Losin' You (part 3)
Deep Purple
Woman From Tokyo (part 1)
Joe Walsh
Meadows (excerpt)
Deep Purple
Woman From Tokyo (part 2)
Rare Earth
(I Know) I'm Losin' You (part 4)
The Temptations
(I Know) I'm Losin' You
Rare Earth
(I Know) I'm Losin' You (part 5)
The Rare Earth version of (I Know) I’m Losing You is just about eleven minutes long. We took about half of that, broke it into five parts and mixed it with Rod Stewart’s version of the song done in two parts and the original version by the Temptations, done in one. The song was written by Eddie Holland, Cornelius Grant, and a guy named Norman Whitfield who produced both the original version and the one by Rare Earth. Whitfield showed up at Motown when he was nineteen and badgered Berry Gordy until he got a job. Whitfield eventually replaced Smoky Robinson as the main producer for The Temptations and he moved them from the established Motown sound of pop R&B into the realm that came to be known as psychedelic soul or funk rock with songs like “Cloud Nine” “Ball of Confusion” “Papa Was a Rolling Stone” and “Psychedelic Shack” all of which Whitfield co-wrote with his usual writing partner, Barrett Strong. Rare Earth was the first band signed to a new label under the Motown umbrella. At the time, the label didn’t have a name. The band suggested Rare Earth, and Rare Earth Records was born.
In the middle of all that psychedelic soul we did a mix of Deep Purple and Joe Walsh. “Woman From Tokyo,” with that signature guitar riff, was recorded in Rome in July of 1972. A few months later, (and before anyone had heard the Deep Purple) Joe Walsh recorded “Meadows,” a song with an almost identical guitar riff, requiring me to do that thing we do, playing songs you know, in ways you’ve never heard before. Thanks for listening. By the way, if you’ve got comments or suggestions, we’d love to hear from you. You’ll find an email link at my website which you can find with a Bing or Google or the search engine of your choice. From the psychedelic shack we call the Way Back Studios, I’m Bill Fitzhugh and I’ll have a fresh batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl next time, right here in the Deep Tracks...
Segment 118
Judging from what you hear on classic rock radio you would think that the influence of Latin music on rock ‘n’ roll began and ended with Carlos Santana and a little bit of War. But here in the Deep Tracks, we take a broader view. Charting it on a time line you could argue that it started in 1958 with Ritchie Valens and “La Bamba.” In the early sixties, over in the world of pop, leaning toward the middle of the road, we heard Latin influences in the records of Herb Alpert and Sergio Mendez. Around 1962, Cuban percussionist Mongo Santamaria had a hit with a cover of Herbie Hancock’s “Watermelon Man” and in 1970, El Chicano delivered “Viva Tirado” while Simon and Garfunkle gave us “El Condor Pasa.” Los Lobos has been delivering great albums with south-of-the-border influence since the early 1980s, including a nice cover of “La Bamba.” It turns out that if you poke around a little, you’ll find that a lot of rock and rollers like to pull out the congas now and then. Stephen Stills is a good example. He spent part of his childhood in Costa Rica and the Panama Canal Zone and those rhythms stayed with him. Think of “Cuban Bluegrass” on the original Manassas album and “Pensamiento” from Down The Road.
In fact today’s batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl was inspired by the release of previously unreleased tracks from the original Manassas sessions. The disc is called Pieces and there’s a short instrumental track that Stills later turned into “Pensamiento.” Of course there’s some low-hanging fruit in the set with one each from Santana and War, and for the more adventurous listeners we’ve got something from by Osibisa; also the “Desperation Samba,” and one from Mink DeVille. Now, we’ve got two surprises in here, the first, three songs into the set, and the second at the end; just try to guess who that last one is without looking at the screen. But we’ll start with something from Chicago’s seventh album, a track I dare say has never seen the light of day on terrestrial rock radio. So break out the salsa, along with the tangos and mambos, from the Way Back Studios, here’s a serious case of “Mongonucleosis.”
Chicago
Mongonucleosis
Santana
Para Los Rumberos
Herb Alpert
Walk Don't Run
Mink DeVille
Demasiado Corazon
Osibisa
Music For Gong Gong
Manassas
Tan Sola Y Triste
Jimmy Buffett
Desperation Samba
War
Low Rider
The Blues Image
Consuelate
Closing the set with something from Open, the second album from The Blues Image. That’s an instrumental called “Consuelate.” At the top of the set, we had a track from Chicago’s seventh album, that went platinum based on a couple of middle-of-the-road hits, but one that also featured some more interesting and jazzier stuff. We heard one called “Mongonucleosis.” That was followed by “Para Los Rumberos” from Santana’s third album. After that, we had a little surprise: Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass from the album Going Places, we heard their cover of the Ventures’ hit, “Walk Don’t Run.” In the middle of the set, we went a little deeper, first with another great track by Mink DeVille, “Demasiado Corazon” from the album Where Angels Fear to Tread. That was followed by a song from the debut album by Osibisa, a group formed in 1969 by a Ghanian sax player by the name of Teddy Osei. Osibisa generally showed more African and Caribbean influence than Mexican or South American but the track we heard, “Music for Gong Gong” fit perfectly in that set.
The short instrumental after that was Stephen Stills and Manassas, one of the previously unreleased tracks from the original Manassas sessions, a piece Stills later turned into “Pensamiento.” After that, Jimmy Buffett’s “Desperation Samaba” with none other than Harrison Ford cracking the whip; that’s from Last Mango in Paris. And there toward the end, that guy who don’t use no gas ‘cause he don’t drive too fast, ‘cause he’s a “Low Rider.” If you’d like to see the set list for this or any of the other shows, you can find them on my website, just give me a google. I’m Bill Fitzhugh, thanks for listening. I’ll be back and sooner or later with another batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl and I hope you’ll join us, right here in the Deep Tracks.
Segment 119
When older songwriters write about being young, they do so with the advantage of having been there and done that. But what do you get when young songwriters, write about getting old? Well, that depends on the songwriter. Paul McCartney famously wrote “When I’m Sixty-Four” at the tender age of sixteen. It’s a sweet little song that takes a gentle look at people as they get on in years. Pete Townshend took a different point of view with all the contempt a twenty year old can muster, when he wrote “My Generation” with its celebrated line, “I hope I die before I get old.” And Elton John was only twenty-three when he penned his rather despairing, “Sixty Years On.” So, yes, it’s true, today’s batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl is about our twilight years, the downward slope, senior citizenship. But hey, like they say, getting old beats the alternative. Or does it? To find out, we’ll return to 1967, when young Art Garfunkle took his tape recorder to a couple of nursing homes where he recorded conversations with the residents. The result was a track on the Bookends album, called, “Voices of Old People” which is a beautiful lead in for the song, “Old Friends” which contains the line, “How terribly strange to be seventy,” which Paul Simon wrote when he was twenty-six.
So the set starts off in somber mood. In fact it was so serious and lacking in humor that I was reminded of one of my favorite sayings: You don’t stop laughing because you get old, you get old because you stop laughing. And nobody knew that better than Harry Nilsson who would still be laughing if he hadn’t had that heart attack back in ’94. Harry had a great sense of humor which is on full display on the rousing singalong, “I’d Rather Be Dead” which features the Senior Citizens of the Stepney & Pinner Choir Club No. 6 of London. Now it’s been said that one of the first signs of old age is the realization that the volume knob also turns to the left. It’s a funny line, except of course as we loose our hearing, we have to keep turning it up. So with that in mind, here are the “Voices of old people.”
Simon & Garfunkle
Voices of Old People
Elton John
Sixty Years On
Simon & Garfunkle
Old Friends
Simon & Garfunkle
Bookends Theme
Neil Young
Old Man
Randy Newman
Old Man
Harry Nilsson
I'd Rather Be Dead
The Beatles
When I'm Sixty-Four
Paul Simon
Old
The Who
My Generation
One of the ironies of “My Generation” is that, technically speaking, most of the people who grew up singing along with it weren’t from Pete’s generation. Baby Boomers who make up most of the fan base for all the artists in that set, were born between 1946 and 1964. So the only true boomer in there was Elton John, born in 1947. The rest of ‘em? Bunch of geezers. Before The Who, Paul Simon, with a song simply called “Old” which he recorded ten years ago, when he was about sixty. You do the math. At the top of the set, from 1968 when Simon and Garfunkle were both twenty-six, we heard several tracks from their great album Bookends. We started with “Voices of Old People” an audio collage recorded by Art at some nursing homes. Powerful enough by themselves, we took the recordings and played them over the string sections of Elton John’s “Sixty Years On” to heighten their impact. That was followed by “Old Friends” and the “Bookends Theme.” Elsewhere in the set, the Beatles with the inevitable “When I’m Sixty Four.”
And before that, a guy who the Beatles loved, Harry Nilsson from his wildly eccentric album Son of Schmilsson. We heard “I’d Rather Be Dead” (than wet my bed) a jaunty little sing along done with a choir of senior citizens. In the middle of the set, two grumpy old men. Neil Young and Randy Newman both wrote songs called “Old Man.” Neil’s ended up on Harvest while Randy’s ended up on Sail Away. By the way, if you want to see the set lists or the show commentaries, I’ve got ‘em on my website which you can get to directly or by way of various forms of social media. If you can’t find what you’re looking for, drop me an email and I’ll point you in the right direction. In the meanwhile, to quote John Barrymore, “A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams.” And I regret to say we’re all out of time. I’m Bill Fitzhugh, thanks for listening. I’ll be back with another batch of All Hand Mixed Vinyl right after I cash my Social Security check. I hope you’ll join us, right here in the Deep Tracks.
